Re: Change man format

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On 2010-02-13, Chris Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 04:28:42PM EST, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
>> Is it possible to change the formatting of man pages so that they are
>> not justified and have no hyphenation?
>> 
>> If so, which files have to be modified, and what would need to be
>> changed?
>
> Try to add the .na and .nh requests to 'man.local'.
>
> On debian lenny the file is /etc/groff/man.local.

  Many thanks; that works.

   On my Mandriva 2009.1 system, the file is
   '/usr/share/groff/site-tmac/man.local'.

> After making your changes, the file looks like this:

   Mine looks like this:

.\" This file is loaded after an-old.tmac.
.\" Put any local modifications to an-old.tmac here.
.na
.nh

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> .\" This file is loaded after an-old.tmac.
> .\" Put any local modifications to an-old.tmac here.
> .
> .if n \{\
> .  \" Debian: Map \(oq to ' rather than ` in nroff mode for devices other
> .  \" than utf8.
> .  if !'\*[.T]'utf8' \
> .    tr \[oq]'
> .
> .  \" Debian: Disable the use of SGR (ANSI colour) escape sequences by
> .  \" grotty.
> .  if '\V[GROFF_SGR]'' \
> .    output x X tty: sgr 0
> .
> .  \" Debian: Map \- to the Unicode HYPHEN-MINUS character, to make
> .  \" searching in man pages easier.
> .  if '\*[.T]'utf8' \
> .    char \- \N'45'
> .
> .  \" Debian: Many UTF-8 man pages use "-" instead of "\-" for dashes such
> .  \" as those in command-line options. This is a bug in those pages, but
> .  \" too many fonts are missing the Unicode HYPHEN character, so we render
> .  \" this as the ASCII-compatible HYPHEN-MINUS instead.
> .  if '\*[.T]'utf8' \
> .    char - \N'45'
> .na
> .nh
> .\}
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> See the "REQUESTS" section of "man 7 groff" for details.
>
> CJ
>
>


-- 
   Chris F.A. Johnson                          <http://cfajohnson.com>
   Author:                                     =======================
   Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)